Responsibility

What responsibility does a person have to society? Ayn Rand would turn this question around, and rephrase it: "How much ownership can other people claim on you?" A responsibility seems to suggest some claim of ownership, which, in most claims of ownership, implies that the owner has some role in an object's creation. The question comes down to: how much does society create us? If we owe a majority of our selves to outside influences, than it can be justified that some of our labor go back to that society. Even Rand concedes that, in the case of parents, children have a special responsibility due to the labor that the parents put into raising someone. If we are largely products of our selves, then we owe little back to society (I am speaking of responsibility, or duty; this would be the moral justification for such things as welfare. If one concedes that they owe nothing to society, yet derive pleasure from helping others, that is a completely different case).

This is (clearly) a question I have yet to fully answer for myself. It is due to my happening to be born into modern, rich, post-industrial nation that I had the possibility of schooling, etc. My most valuable tool, perhaps the most valuable thing in any society, is language. I would be capable of little without language. But to whom do I owe the possibility of my learning a language? My parents, clearly, and my schoolteachers, yes, but they hold as much claim on language as the cashier at the store holds on the giving me of bread. Do I owe society a part of me because there is access to more and more information that I had no part in developing? I can't see that as possible, as the only free people could be isolated savages, and as we learned more and more we could own less and less of our selves. If something is a free, public good, then I don't think that people can ethically be required to pay for it.

I tend to lean more towards the 'we owe little to society,' because despite the advantages that individuals may have due to race, class, etc, I believe that an individual has the largest role in what he or she ultimately becomes. Why is it that someone who is mentally handicapped can earn a living in this society, but some people who are more genetically gifted cannot? This is the question I've been trying to answer for a while. Luck may be a factor, but in most cases I can't see that as the determining one. Lack of opportunity? I don't think this is so - if anything it is the lack of knowing that there are opportunities that impedes people most. Ultimately, I believe, the answer is a lack of ambition (I'm not saying this is a character flaw; some people may believe that they really do have no opportunity). I think this is largely due to our society promoting a belief that if someone is not well off, it's not their fault; I'm not challenging this belief, but it seems to me that if this is accepted there will be more people who are not well off.